Articles by Ethan Arpi
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Friday
June 23
2006With Fabio Rosa, Brazil Goes Solar
If you think George Bush?s solar powered spa is hot, hot, hot, then wait to you hear about Fabio Rosa and his electrifying projects south of the border. Who is this man, you might wonder? Well, Fabio Rosa is a social entrepreneur?a businessman with both social and economic...
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- academia
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Wednesday
June 21
2006Lemurs Are Cool
If you?re in Madagascar at this very moment and you?re reading this blog, then chances are you?re attending Conservation International?s symposium, ?Defying Nature’s End: The Africa Context.? But for those of us who have to see lemurs in the zoo, here?s some information about...
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- academia
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Tuesday
June 20
2006Will Blogging and WiFi Save the World?
Writing in the latest issue of the New Republic, Christine Rosen takes on techno-utopians like Glen Reynolds and argues that blogging and WiFi will not save the world. As someone who ekes out an existence publishing online musings about new technologies and the developing world, I could not...
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Monday
June 19
2006Pay-as-you-go computers in Brazil
I?ve decided to come clean and admit it. I hope Brazil wins its sixth World Cup. So for those of you cheering for the Ghanas and Ecuadors of the world, you will find little solace in this post, which extols the virtues of corporate superpower, Microsoft, and its latest business venture in...
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Monday
June 19
2006Biodegradable Plastics
In the 1967 film The Graduate, Walter Brook gives a baby faced Dustin Hoffman advice he should never forget. ?I want to say one word to you. Just one word.? After pausing for dramatic effect, he continues, ?Plastics.? Now, almost forty years later, Dustin Hoffman has forty times the...
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- Education
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- academia
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Friday
June 16
2006More Thoughts on Ethanol
Silvio Donizetti Palvequeres, president of the farm workers? union in Ribeir?o Preto, told the New York Times in April that Brazil?s ethanol boom has only increased the burden placed on sugarcane farmhands.? ?You used to have to cut 4 tons a day, but now they want 8 or 10, and if you...
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Wednesday
June 14
2006Sugarcoating Petroleum’s Future
With skyrocketing gas prices and dwindling supplies of oil, many energy experts have turned their attention to Brazil and its thirty year initiative to develop alternative sources of energy. Now former President Bill Clinton has joined the rank of those who see Brazil as a pioneer in this...
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Tuesday
June 13
2006Mass Transit That Works
In grassroots politics, Porto Alegre is best known for participatory budgeting, a practice in which councils of city residents, and not political fat cats, decide how to allocate municipal funds. The success of this practice in rooting out corruption was a watershed event in local politics...
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